Castle in the Sky: DVD Review
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Page 1 of 3 Buena Vista / 1986 / 125 Minutes / Rated PG / Street Date: March 2, 2010
This film is a fantasy action-adventure like you’ve never seen. Pazu & Sheeta are good main characters, but it’s really the supporting characters that make this film great, from the villainous Muska to the whacky family of pirates and the robots and backgrounds and the “Castle” itself. This film is an amazing journey and really showcases a lot of Miyazaki’s love for flying and flying machines. The amount and design of the flying machines here is really impressive and imaginative. While none of them look practical for actual flight, in a fantasy film such as this they fit the mood and world that Miyazaki has created beautifully.
The background design in this film is really another character. Miyazaki has really created a place out of time that feels authentic and real, from the coal miner’s town to a flight heavy society and a broken old castle in the clouds. Seeing the titular castle at the end really causes me to long to see it in action when a society of people lived there. It really must’ve been something to see. This film leaves me wanting more, and at an already impressive 2 hours and 5 minutes that’s saying something.
While Kiki has my favorite English dub of all Miyazaki films Castle in the Sky has my least favorite. My first introduction to Laputa: Castle in the Sky was before the Disney dub – I found a copy of the film at a small anime rental store in Los Angeles. This copy had the English dub done by Tokuma in the 1980s. Since then I had seen the film in Japanese, and I enjoyed both versions a great deal. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I absolutely hate the dub. I think my biggest problem is with Anna Paquin and James Van Der Beek. I don’t have anything against either one of them. Anna has undoubtedly done work that I really enjoy, and I haven’t seen enough of James to build any sort of negative impression of him, but I hate their voice work here. I found the dialogue stilted and the acting to be pretty awful. I will say that Mark Hamill as Muska is very good, but he’s a voice-over pro (just listen to his Joker in Batman: The Animated Series).
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